Fumonisin B1 (FB1) is a mycotoxin produced by Fusarium verticillioides (formerly F. moniliforme), a fungus that commonly contaminates maize. FB1 causes toxicological effects in laboratory and domestic animals including pigs. Because the gastrointestinal tract represents the first barrier met by exogenous food compounds, the purpose of this study was to ...

Fusarium verticillioides produces a group of mycotoxins known as fumonisins in maize kernels. Fumonisins are associated with a variety of mycotoxicoses in humans and animals; thus, their presence in food is a considerable safety issue. This study addressed fumonisin B1 (FB1) production in two components of the maize kernel, namely ...

Berries of Vitis vinifera L. cv. Barbera were infected, at veraison and during ripening, by a conidial suspension of A. japonicus, A. ochraceus, A. fumigatus and two isolates of A. carbonarius to control ochratoxin A production and stilbene induced synthesis. The experimental design provided also for intact and punctured berries ...

The primary commodity of corn wet milling is starch, but two coproducts (corn gluten feed, CGF and corn gluten meal, CGM) also are produced. CGM and CGF are marketed as animal foodstuffs and are important economically; however, variation in composition reduces quality. There are few data on the effect of ...

Patulin is a mycotoxin produced by microscopic fungi belonging to the Penicillium and Aspergillus genera. The natural occurrence of patulin in four apple products marketed in Italy and purchased from the supermarket, herbalist, and retail shops was studied. Thirty-three samples of the four products had no detectable patulin contamination. The ...

Fumonisins are mycotoxins produced by Fusarium verticillioides (=F. moniliforme) and other Fusarium species. They are found in corn and corn-based foods. Cooking decreases fumonisin concentrations in food products under some conditions; however, little is known about how cooking effects biological activity. Baked cornbread, pan-fried corncakes, and deep-fried fritters were made ...

Trichothecenes are agriculturally important mycotoxins of relevance to human health. Fungi capable of producing trichothecenes can be found throughout the world, and include certain species of Fusarium, Myrothecium, and Stachybotrys. The production of mycotoxins by these toxigenic species is determined by genetic factors and the environmental conditions of their growth. ...

Mycotoxins are fungal secondary metabolites formed by consecutive series of enzyme-catalysed reactions from a few biochemically simple intermediates of primary metabolism. These mycotoxins can enter the human and animal food chain by direct or indirect contamination. Mycotoxins are equally harmful to animal and human beings. Realizing the importance of mycotoxins ...

Ochratoxin A (OTA) is a mycotoxin food and feed-contaminant known to induce nephro and hepatotoxicity in human and animal, and related to human Balkan Endemic Nephropathy. However, haematological troubles are also observed in case of acute OTA intoxication. These disorders observed in animals emphasise the necessity to determine if OTA ...

Mycotoxins (ie toxins produced by molds) are fungal metabolites that can contaminate foods and feeds and cause toxic effects in higher organisms that consume the contaminated commodities. Therefore, mycotoxin contamination of foods and feeds results is a serious food safety issue and affects the competitiveness of US agriculture in both ...

It is hypothesized that the long-term rotation of maize (Zea mays L.) and soybean (Glycine max L.) in east central Illinois has caused a significant change in the ovipositional behavior of the western corn rootworm, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte. Since the mid 1990s in east central Illinois, western corn rootworm ...

AIM: To examine residual debris within sterilised instruments prior to cataract surgery. METHODS: (i) Flushings from 32 sets of phacoemulsification instruments, sterilised according to hospital routine protocols, were taken preoperatively and analysed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). (ii) A total of 16 sets of flushings from a different institute were ...

Apple-based beverages are regularly consumed by adults and children in Belgium. They are locally produced or imported from other countries. The apples used as starting material for these productions are frequently contaminated by mycotoxin-producing moulds and damaged during transport and handling. The current study was undertaken to investigate whether patulin ...

Ochratoxin A (OTA) is a nephrotoxic mycotoxin that is being increasingly considered as the main causal agent of Balkan endemic nephropathy (BEN), a fatal kidney disease associated with the end stage of urothelial tumours. However, despite the considerable amount of data, it is still controversial whether OTA plays a causative ...

A survey for the presence of ochratoxin A (OTA) was conducted from 1995 to 1999 on 268 locally produced commercial wines, and on 81 samples of domestic dried vine fruits (currants and sultanas) collected between 1998 and 2000 from sites of primary storage and processing. The OTA concentration in red ...

Fusarium graminearum head blight of wheat is a destructive disease of the world's wheat-growing areas. This work was performed to analyze the distribution and contamination of deoxynivalenol (DON) and its relationship with F. graminearum kernel invasion in Argentina durum wheat area during two consecutive harvests. A total of 147 samples ...

Aflatoxins are toxic metabolites found in foods and feeds. When ruminants eat foodstuffs containing aflatoxins B(1) and B(2), these toxins are metabolized and excreted as aflatoxin M(1) and M(2) in milk. The aim was to determine the incidence of these aflatoxins in commercial milk collected from supermarkets in Ribeirão Preto-SP, ...

The objective of this study was to isolate and identify fungal species found in natural association with adults of Musca domestica. The adult insects were collected from two natural breeding grounds: hog pens and an urban sanitary landfill. The isolated fungi were identified as: Aspergillus flavus (23.8%), A. niger var. ...

Ochratoxin A concentrations in rye and wheat in Denmark for 1992-99 are reported. The results show that the concentration of ochratoxin A is higher in rye than in wheat for both conventionally and organically grown rye and wheat. The levels in organically grown rye are higher than in conventionally grown ...

The presence of cereals and grains in the formulation of pet foods suggests the need to control aflatoxin contamination in these foods. The objective of the study was to analyse domestic pet food to determine the occurrence of aflatoxins as well as their risk to animal health. One hundred food ...

Determination of ochratoxin A (OTA) concentration was performed in commercial beer in Belgium using immunoaffinity column (OchraTest) clean-up and liquid chromatography. The procedure was validated and fulfilled the European Committee for Standardization's criteria. It offered a detection limit of 3 ng l(-1) and a quantification limit of 10 ng l(-1). ...

A three-year surveillance program assessed the extent of mycotoxin contamination of key foods and feeds grown in Bangladesh. The study also included groundnuts utilized as snack food. In the first two phases of the program the samples collected were analyzed only for aflatoxins, but in the third phase, as well ...

Mycotoxins are fungal secondary metabolites that are toxic to vertebrates produced by organisms that occur as plant pathogens, soilborne fungi, airborne fungi and aeroallergens. They are distributed worldwide and may be recovered from a wide range of substrates. Their presence in food and feeds, as the result of fungal diseases ...

Aflatoxins are known to be hepatotoxic, carcinogenic, and teratogenic. A positive correlation has been established between the consumption of aflatoxin-contaminated foods and the increased incidence of liver cancer worldwide. A survey of Egyptian corn and corn-based products and by-products shows that the majority of the samples had higher limits of ...

StarLink (Aventis CropScience US) hybrid corn has been genetically modified to contain a pesticidal protein, Cry9C, which makes it more resistant than traditional varieties to certain types of corn insect pests. Unlike other varieties of genetically engineered corn, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency authorized the use of StarLink corn for ...

From 1998 to 2001, 216 ingredients intended for incorporation into chicken feed, which included groundnut cake, maize, millets, rice bran, sorghum, soybean, sunflower, and mixed feeds, were assayed for aflatoxins and ochratoxin A contamination using an indirect competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Thirty-eight percent of the samples were contaminated with aflatoxins ...

The authors determined fungi concentrations and genera from onion fields located in monsoon and nonmonsoon areas of Taiwan, as well as concentrations from a county housing location, which served as the comparison site. The authors explored the relationship(s) among onion harvesting, monsoon characteristics, airborne fungal levels, and mycotic eye infection. ...

A method was developed for simultaneous quantitation of Aspergillus flavus/A. parasiticus and aflatoxins in peanuts. Peanut samples were ground with an equal weight of water in a vertical cutter mixer to produce a slurry. Separate subsamples were taken for dilution-plating to determine total colony forming units (CFU)/g of A. flavus/A. ...

The major risk factors and processing steps that can lead to contamination of green coffee with ochratoxin A (OTA) have been identified. Surveys of the green coffee production chain indicate that Aspergillus ochraceus and A. carbonarius are the most potent OTA producers on coffee. Both have been successfully grown in ...

Aspergillus niger is one of the most important microorganisms used in biotechnology. It has been in use already for many decades to produce extracellular (food) enzymes and citric acid. In fact, citric acid and many A. niger enzymes are considered GRAS by the United States Food and Drug Administration. In ...

Aflatoxins produced by Aspergillus flavus are commonly found in human and animal foods including grains, cereals, peanut products, sorghum, and soy seeds. Exposure to aflatoxins has been associated with carcinogenicity. This paper reports a simple, portable, and rapid fluorescence polarization (FP) assay for aflatoxin determination in grains. This immunoassay is ...

Ochratoxin A is a toxic and carcinogenic fungal secondary metabolite; its presence in foods is increasingly regulated. Various fungi are known to produce ochratoxins, but it is not known which species produce ochratoxins consistently and which species cause ochratoxin contamination of various crops. We isolated fungi in the Aspergillus ochraceus ...

OBJECTIVES: Ochratoxin A (OA) is a ubiquitous mycotoxin that can contaminate foods, drinks, and animal feeds worldwide. Humans and animals can therefore absorb this toxin via the gastrointestinal tract after ingestion of contaminated products. OA is known to exert toxic effects, particularly on the renal system, and the International Agency ...

This article presents the methodology and the simulation results concerning the quantitative assessment of exposure to the fungus toxin named Ochratoxin A (OA) in food, in humans in France. We show that is possible to provide reliable calculations of exposure to OA with the conjugate means of a nonparametric-type method ...

This is a prospective study in which aflatoxin levels were measured in umbilical cord blood from 201 women delivered consecutively in Tawam and Al Ain hospitals in order to determine whether the fetuses had been significantly exposed to the toxin. Aflatoxin B1, M1 and M2 were measured using high performance ...

The presence of zearalenone (ZEN) in Korean foods such as barley, barley-based foods, corn, corn-based foods, fruits and vegetables was investigated by direct competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (dcELISA) and the liquid chromatography (LC) method. A total of 164 samples was collected from Seoul, Korea, in 1998 and 1999 including 30 ...

StarLink corn is a variety of yellow corn that has been genetically modified by the insertion of an altered cry9C gene into the plant genome. resulting in expression of the insecticidal Cry9C protein. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved StarLink corn for use in animal feed but not in ...

The occurrence of filamentous fungi together with bacteriological parameters was assessed in 126 samples of still bottled mineral water of eight different commercial brands in Argentina. In spoiled samples with visible mycelium growth, the most frequently isolated fungal species were Penicillium citrinum, P. glabrum, other Penicillium species, Cladosporium cladosporioides and ...

Aflatoxins are toxic metabolites of some Aspergillus flavus, A. parasiticus and A. nomius strains that occur in many foods and feeds. There are four major natural occurring aflatoxins: B1, B2, G1 and G2. These toxins can cause illness in human beings and animals. Aflatoxin B1 is the most abundant and ...

Trichothecene mycotoxins are secondary metabolites of Fusarium moulds that routinely infect cereal crops. Processing can reduce, but not eliminate, trichothecenes from cereal-based foods, and the potential presence of the trichothecenes in cereal foods poses a significant health risk to consumers. Deoxynivalenol (vomitoxin, DON) is the most common of the trichothecenes ...

The importance of the aflatoxins from food safety and economic standpoints has continued to drive the development of new analytical methods for these mycotoxins. Currently the widely used methods for measurement of aflatoxins fall into two groups, the established chromatographic methods and traditional enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs). Recently substantial progress ...

AIMS: The Lactobacillus plantarum strains VTT E-78076 (E76) and VTT E-79098 (E98) were studied for their antifungal potential against Fusarium species. METHODS AND RESULTS: In vitro screening with automated turbidometry as well as direct and indirect impedimetric methods clearly showed Lact. plantarum cell-free extracts to be effective against Fusarium species ...

The Fusarium epidemic of 1996 in Ontario winter wheat resulted in direct losses of well over $100 million Canadian dollars (CDN). More importantly, wheat marketing in Ontario has changed. The market focus remains primarily food grade. Thus, the awareness of deoxynivalenol (DON) entering the food chain has influenced marketing and ...

The presence of aflatoxin B1 was analyzed in imported food and feedstuffs of national production in the period of 1990 through 1996, destined to animal and human consumption using an immunoenzymatic reagent kit (Aflacen, Ckure, la Habana, Cuba) with a detection limit of 0.3 microg/kg. It was found that the ...

This report presents the conclusions of a Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee convened to assess the risks associated with the consumption of food contaminated with certain mycotoxins. The first part of the report contains a general discussion of the principles for evaluating mycotoxins in food, including those concerning analytical methods, sampling, ...

Control programs set up by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for aflatoxin, an unavoidable natural contaminant produced by specific molds that invade a number of feedstuffs and basic foods, provide an example of forces that affect risk assessment and management strategies by a regulatory agency. More recently, on an ...